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Comment by alephnil | Hacker News Reader

I know you intended to be sarcastic, but anyway.

Governments want innovation, originality and critical thinking for its ability to foster wealth and a rich culture. At the same time they are afraid of the disruptive changes that is results of it, so they set up mass surveillance for the fear that is coming out of control.

At the same time they probably know that this have a bad effect on the society. That is why it was taken enormous measures to keep it secret, including gag orders on anything that could reveal its existence, likely in a hope that the bad effect won't happen if people don't know about it. Now the people know.

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Bureaucracies don't like originality and critical thinking, but most people don't exhibit those behaviors anyway. And those that do, will do so regardless of reward or risk. Any hierarchy of control will calcify as it gets larger otherwise it would collapse under its own weight, so a surveillance state that aims to keep artistic endeavors in check makes sense.

While we do need a small number of elites to improve and think up new ideas (see Lenin's New Economic Policy of infusing innovation into Communism through temporary small scale Capitalism), it would be dangerous if everyone had free time or capacity of enlightened intellect to be as creative and critical as they are capable. The 60s are great existence proof of that.

As we are seeing with a general lack of outrage in the population over the snowden released information, people are more cautious, saying less and policing themselves. It is a small minority, maybe to their own peril who are speaking their minds.

The cynic would say that maybe Snowden's release was a planned move by the Administration. Think of how much more effective the system will be if it is in "the open." A bold move, but if successful, forever changes what the notion of liberty means in the US.

"...those that do [show creativity and original thinking], will do so regardless of reward or risk."

I disagree. I think that there will be some people who will be creative no matter what. There will some people who won't be creative no matter what. And there will be some people in the middle who could swing either way.

As an example: I think that Steve Jobs would've been creative and ambitious no matter what. But I don't think that Wozniak would've been ambitious if it wasn't for Jobs pushing him.

Certain environments foster creativity and experimenting. US colleges are full of weird intellectuals with crazy ideas. OTOH, Your typical, say, police department (or most government agencies...) is not.

The environment that we live in will tend to sway people in one direction or the other. (... just look at the environment of S.V. or YCombinator...)

I totally agree, I was thinking entirely of the former. The state knows it needs some of those people to go forward. But they will produce no matter what. Limiting the number of people on the second set is of little detriment and actually what I think is the goal.

Yes the total creative output is lower, but control is still retained. The state maximizes for control, not creative output or liberty.

It is really sad the NSA thing existed in the first place. A waste of intellect, creativity and resources on all sides. All those TFLOP years of computation for what?

It's funny, I was just thinking of what would have happened if Steve Jobs lived in a Soviet communist country (there's a discussion about communism in another thread). I don't think he would have succeeded, considering he would have had to get approval from the Party/current leaders for every little thing he did (or even just the big things).

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